The Sympathy I Can Give Isn’t Enough
Have you ever felt sad or sorry after learning about something, I’ve felt that feeling before. One day in the middle of my 8th grade year, my language arts teacher began to teach the whole class a new topic. This topic that we spent weeks on was the Holocaust. When we began learning about it, I was really interested in learning about the Holocaust because I wanted to learn more about World War II and the events that happened during 1933 to 1945.
Our class also read this book called Night, this book was made by a Holocaust survivor. Before we started, I was very interested about what was the book about. As we kept on reading through it, I learned about how harsh Nazi Germany was with their concentration camps and how intolerant they were with Jewish and other people. Reading this book gave me a feeling of guilt, it felt like a sword piercing through my heart. As I continued, reading about all of the the deaths and cruelty shown in the book, I began to feel sad because all of these people, especially the children, have gone through a lot more pain than I have in my 14 ? years of life.
After reading and doing research on the Holocaust, I began to understand how drastic humans can go against each other for being different, killing each other with traditional weapons like guns and chemical weapons like gases and nuclear bombs. In my 14 ? years of life, the largest amount of pain that I’ve received was probably being hit by a belt. The largest amount of pain and suffering that has happened during WWII was probably given to the people being experimented on. People were tortured, malnourished, burned, shot at, and gassed. These things have actually caused death while the only thing I got was just a red mark on my skin. The pain that the Holocaust victims have went through compared to the pain that I’ve been through is like 5000 levels of pain above what I received.
It’s really sad how these kind of events are what’s really preventing us from achieving peace between each nation, ethnicity, and religion. It makes me think why can’t we treat others (the physically and mentally disabled, people with different sexualities, religious beliefs, ethnicities, and people with different views on things) with respect. It has also left me thinking about the pain, sadness, and despair that has been caused inside each concentration camp. It also left me thinking why would anyone do this? Why did Adolf Hitler try to exterminate the Jews?
